As I am writing this I am weighing what we will put into this
month paper. We certainly will follow our model of bringing you
reports on community events, yet the elections are important to
all of us and therefore I have kept my ear to the ground. I find
in this case it is more important to listen to individuals than
to the rhetoric of big media or even the politicians themselves.
Polls are pretty useless, as we know from the past. From the
past we also know that people are disillusioned, even cynical
about politics and politicians. I cannot remember one year, not
even one month when I did not hear major complaints about
current Prime Minister Harper and his Conservatives and how
extremely to the right they have swung, how there is nothing
conservative about them, that this form of government run on the
country is more like a dictatorship than a democracy, and, and ,
and, and…still, this coalition has survived a few years and
looks as though the changes might be even more undesirable than
the insisted upon election wanted to remedy…or so the commentary
ran.

We had a Conservative Government with Mr. Harper on the helm.
His party started early in the year to run black propaganda
campaigns against Mr. Ignatieff long before an election became a
reality. Then we had the Liberal Party lead by Mr. Ignatieff
who, granted, has grown a little in experience over the last 2
years and proofed to be an engaging speaker and proponent of
democracy, something people take for granted, yet should not.
Like it or not, the negative attack ads worked. We know that
anything presented often enough and loud enough and not
addressed and corrected will then hick up later, and even lies
can be sold as truth that way.

Thus it is surprising that on the one hand people dislike the
Conservatives for playing with such dirty tricks and on the
other hand considered them to be the lesser of all evils, to be
trusted with the stability they crave. Wasn’t it US president
Thomas Jefferson who said that if people want security they
forfeit their freedom? Just a thought.

Mr. Ignatieff is thought of kindly but inexperienced. He comes
across as a philosophical intellectual, a teacher, which is
probably what the country needs, but not necessarily at the helm
of a government, people think; but it also explains why Justin
Trudeau likes him so much; after all, he is a teacher too and
his father certainly was intellectual. People lean towards the
familiar.

Mr. Layton is the recipient of the protest vote of those
Canadians, especially in Quebec, who want change, not rhetoric,
but it will be hard to deliver with the now certain majority of
the Conservative Party. The leading parties are at totally
opposite ends of the spectrum and it will be interesting to see
how they will overcome the vast territory that divides them.

So much for the people’s opinions. More involved it got in
emails we received from political observers/players of the
professional ilk. They even suggested that revolution is in
order to save the country from a Harper style dictatorship, and some of them
feel that Donald Trump would make a good president in the US of
A and save the bacon of the western world. Others yet feel that
no one can save us from what lies ahead and only war will pull
the world out of the dire straits it finds itself in.

So, we waited for what the people have divined to be the best
thing for our nation. They decided that a majority government is
in order. The Conservatives won with a comfortable margin and
the NDP and Jack Layton are now the official opposition,
while
the Liberals have lost their presence and any importance in the
country. Perhaps they too have to reform themselves, like the
Conservatives did through the actions of the Reform Party.

In the meantime I shall recall the pleasant festivities in our
community that are still to be had in our institutions.

I also encourage you to plan on a celebratory Mothers Day and
wish all a wonderful experience.
Sybille Forster-Rentmeister

P.S.: Our front page was photographed at a Kinder Fest in
Brampton’s Hansa Haus. Many proud mothers were there to cheer on
their awesome kids.

As the editor of Echo Germanica Sybille reflects on cultural, artistic,
political and daily events within the German-Canadian landscape.